Hackers send patient data stolen from New Zealand hospitals to media outlets

Hackers sent patient data stolen from Waikato District Health Board in New Zealand to local media outlets May 26, The Hill reported.

Four details: 

1. Waikato District Health Board, which operates five hospitals, was hit by a cyberattack May 18 that forced a full outage of its information services, according to the report.

2. The media outlets that received the sensitive patient information declined to publish it. 

3. In an online statement, the Waikato District Health Board said that "media outlets have confirmed they will not make this information public and have referred it to the police." 

4. The health system is investigating the incident and is working with cybersecurity experts to recover from the cyberattack. Waikato has had to cancel certain appointments because of the attack, and on May 24 the health system had to contact banks directly to pay staff because IT systems were unable to process employee payrolls.

 

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